Synopsis
by Clarke Fountain

From 1973 to 1989, Chile was governed by the military under Salvador Pinochet. During that time, many people suffered from the government's efforts to eliminate all dissent. This documentary uses interviews with survivors of government torture and photographs from the period to tell the story of those who resisted the overthrow of democracy. Many of the women interviewed, if they were not themselves the victims of torture, had relatives who were among the desaparacidos (the "disappeared"), people who have been abducted by agents of the government and are quite reasonably presumed to be dead. Also included is a song from a 1988 concert given in Argentina by concerned musicians Sting and Peter Gabriel who raised money for Amnesty International to protest these governmental crimes. One of the most memorable scenes is that of the relatives of these abductees as they slowly traverse a desert region while poking sticks into the sand, hoping by that means to discover the graves of their loved ones.